


pallas academy

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Lolita, Past Abuse, Power Imbalance, good boy meets bad girl, past dub-con, past self-harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:28:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10620732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: Neglected and cast aside, all Nancy wants is to come home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from otpprompts:
> 
> Imagine Persons A and B of your OTP both go to a private school. Person A is really studious and innocent, like never been kissed type thing. In contrast, Person B got kicked out of their old school for sleeping with a teacher. One day Person B sees Person A in the hall and decides that ‘corrupting’ Person A will be their personal mission this school year. Up to you whether or not they succeed.
> 
> (possible triggers: age/power dynamic, past seduction/dubcon)

The thing is, he wouldn’t look so bad if he  _tried_.

But he wears glasses—not the hot kind, either, these hideous old-fashioned tortoiseshell frames that make him look like a younger version of a particularly nebbish professor—and his hair is _impossible_ and his wardrobe seems to consist entirely of jeans, polo shirts a size too big, and grubby tennis shoes. She wonders if he lost fifty pounds the year before; she wonders if he’s here on scholarship or if his parents have some strenuous objection to buying him anything form-fitting. He treats his body like he’s ashamed of it and he doesn’t look  _at_ people; those rare times his gaze is off the floor, it’s fixed to someone’s left or right.

He reminds her of a phantom, the kind of guy who is here but  _isn’t,_ not really. She wonders if he scrawls everything he wishes he could say in long impassioned screeds on yellow legal pads, pen digging so hard into the pages that they curl, embossed with bottled rage and hissed wishes, or in all-caps on message boards.

He reminds her of  _her_ , of the girl she hasn’t let herself be in a long time.

She sees him pushing up those damned glasses in the line for the dining hall when she walks by, laughing about something with a pair of girls who have each burned through at least one other “behaviorally-stimulating” boarding school, girls whose only pleasure is in watching the world burn and holding the smoking match. She isn’t one of them but she wants  _out_ and if her father is called enough times, maybe he’ll take her home,  _maybe_ …

But thinking about it makes Nancy’s chest tight and she nudges Jess’s shoulder so she doesn’t have to think about it. “Who’s that?”

“That guy?” Jessica flips her dark hair over her shoulder with a sneer. “Nickerson—some old-fashioned name, Ted or something? Total loser.”

But there’s something about him. He has none of the awkwardness or self-consciousness she sees in most of the other students. Maybe he’s been hurt so much that he no longer even tries. Or maybe he’s stronger. She wishes she was.

“Huh,” Nancy says, pretending to dismiss it as Paula says something else. But she can’t stop thinking about him.

She finds him in the library the next week. No laptop or tablet; he’s at the table by the window, three books open and a pad at his elbow. He pushes those damned glasses up and she studies the line of his jaw. If he just  _tried_ … but he doesn’t. It will do nothing for her cred here to pursue him; in fact, Jessica and Paula hang out with her because they make it a point to show they don’t care about why she was kicked out of her last school. They’re even in awe of her.

They don’t know the teacher she allowed to clumsily seduce her was a pale man who wore blazers with leather-patched elbows and saw theirs as the tragic love affair that would fuel his Great American Novel, those initial caps hanging in the air every time he spoke of it. They don’t know about the sick turn in her belly when she would slick on cherry lip gloss and go to class, seeing his gaze go distant when she would suck on the cap of her pen. He called her  _Lolita_ once and there’s so much she didn’t tell anyone and she never will.

She wanted her father to sit her down, to  _see_ her for once.  _What is this? Why are you doing this?_ But her father, that keen judge of human character, who knows exactly how to sway twelve members of a jury, only sees her as a liability now. She needs to be tucked away so she can’t threaten his political career. She needs to be quiet and demure, crossed legs and knee socks and closed-lipped smiles. Lolita without letting a damp palm linger on her knee for too long.

Nancy shoplifts the lacy black bra and matching thong because she can and because Paula and Jess are alight with jealous envy; she goes back later, claiming she noted a discrepancy on the bill, and pays for them. She dresses in a tight black tank top and a red miniskirt, and when she digs through her makeup bag and sees that cherry-red lip gloss, her stomach turns. Her first time, not to mention her second, third, fourth, was nothing like she thought it would be. Nothing is the way she thought it would be. And if Ned—she’s learned his name now, his real one—is an awkward loser, she’s doing him a favor; if he’s just reinventing himself, like she is, then maybe he’ll be a decent fuck.

She attracts more than a few catcalls, whistles, and propositions on her way over to Ned’s dorm, but the grin on her face is obligatory and she doesn’t consider anything else. He’s on the chess club and they have a meeting and he has a single to himself, the asshole. Maybe he’s so much of a loser that no one will room with him. She picks the lock, breaking her best speed record, and sneaks into his room without anyone catching sight of her.

Apple-pie order. Bed made like maybe the last place was a military school hell-bent on taking off the baby fat and instilling brutal discipline. The only photo is a framed one of an older couple; the man looks so like him that he must be Ned’s father, and if Ned will look like him, then maybe things won’t always be so hopeless for him. Neatly stacked library books, half-full laundry basket beside the dresser. No photos of friends at all; no collage of movie-star photos with torn edges and scribbled hearts.

Then she finds his journal, a moleskine tucked under the mattress, and she can’t resist it.

_Maybe something’s wrong with me. All the guys brag about the girls they’re dating and no girl ever looks twice at me…_

_I wish I knew what to do but every time I think about even talking to a girl, it’s like my throat closes up. I don’t know why._

_Mom says I’ll have plenty of time but I’m starting to think it just will never happen for me, that I’ll never ever have a girlfriend…_

He’s brutally honest and brimming with a painful awareness of how different he seems and how much he loathes the easy charm he sees other men use. He wants to love someone. He wants to love someone so much that it’s tearing him apart.

He’s a dandelion and she’s a hurricane.

She’s just sliding the journal back under his mattress, sniffling as she shakes her head, when she hears the key in his door lock. She doesn’t have time to do anything other than straighten her spine before he opens the door; she can’t arrange herself seductively on his bed, hide under it, or make a dash for the window. She can’t play it off, but her mind is racing anyway; she can say she was looking for class notes, or…

His eyes meet hers and widen with surprise.

No one seemed to realize that what happened, happened because she was  _hurting_ and she realized along the way that her teacher loved only what she represented, not who she  _was._ No one looked beyond the fact that yes she had known, yes she had gone to him even after, because at least it was  _something_. And now she’s even further from what she wants and Ned’s hurting too.

The girl she hasn’t been in a long time gives him a small smile. “Have you ever been kissed, Ned?” she asks softly.

He clears his throat, glancing behind him, and she reads it in him. He thinks this is a trap, some joke his dorm mates are playing on him. She’s a mirage, an illusion, another reminder of what he doesn’t and can’t have. “What’s it matter?” he finally replies, and his gaze is fixed somewhere near her right shoulder. He takes a step inside, his backpack still hanging from one strap.

“You’re sweet, aren’t you,” she says. She wants to cross her arms, but she can imagine him startling, bolting away from her, already anxious about why she might be in his room, against the rules. “It's—it’s a scavenger hunt. A kiss from a sweet guy to cross off my list.”

His jaw tightens, his lips press together, and she thinks again that, underneath this armor, a handsome guy hides in plain sight. “I doubt that,” he replies.

“I get it.” She tries to make it a joke, but she can’t quite manage it. “You need a good girl.”

She starts to move past him, but he catches her wrist in the cage of his finger and thumb, and she shivers. “What are you doing in here, really?”

“I wanted to talk to you.” She shrugs. “Seemed like the easiest way.”

“So, in the dining hall or between classes…”

“Not with that ‘fuck off’ look stamped on your face.”

He releases her wrist in a jerk, flushing slightly. “I…”

She shrugs again. “And I know some guys don’t go for damaged goods. Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “You aren’t,” he says. “Not—not unless you think you are.”

He relaxes enough to sit down on the bed and after a few minutes she takes a seat in the desk chair, and he’s a little slow to warm up but she’s patient, and she’s not sure any other girl has ever taken the time to actually  _talk_ to him. His sense of humor is dry and sarcastic, and their eyes only really meet a few times, but that’s all right.

When she walked into his room she had a plan in the back of her mind, to fuck him and relish the rapture and unfettered desire she would see in his eyes, to string him along and keep his attention for as long as he held hers, then leave him behind. Sooner or later she’ll break the wrong rule and her father will find a place to bury her deeper. Sooner or later…

But she finds herself smiling an hour later, once she tells him she has to leave, and he stands, rising easily. She sees weights and a scale in the corner, an orange on his desk, the way he stuffs his hands in his pockets and ducks his head. He feels like there’s something wrong with him. She knows there’s something wrong with her.

She closes the space between them in a few strides and moves to look into his eyes, and in that second she  _knows_ no other woman has looked at him this way, because no one else has ever  _seen_ him the way she is right now. Otherwise he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

She reaches up, standing on her tiptoes. “You still owe me a kiss.”

He chuckles and gives her a soft clumsy kiss on the cheek. She turns her face and her lips brush his, and after a beat his lips part and he doesn’t know what to do, she can tell. He kisses her with the pent-up longing and need and sincerity she saw in his journal, clumsy and desperate and sweet. And then she reaches up and strokes her hand through his hair, sliding her tongue into his mouth and showing him what to do. He responds eagerly, following her lead, and when they finally, slowly part, her head is spinning and she wants to put a weak dismissive smile on her face, but she can’t.

“That was a good start.”

“Start?” He still looks startled, almost bemused. “So I can have another try?”

She brushes a kiss against his cheek and gives him a small grin. “Let’s get in some more practice tomorrow night, huh, handsome?”

And he doesn’t have to try. When a grin lights his face in answer, he’s the most handsome man she’s ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know about this…”

Nancy tugs his hand a little. “C’mon. Aren’t you curious?”

Ned still hesitates for a moment, and she can feel, almost see the shift in him. It goes against his nature to disobey the rules. She pays attention and she’s seen his dorm room light click off a minute before curfew; he doesn’t even write in pencil in library books. He’s so orderly and neat and he colors in the lines—and something about her just wants to… not break him. She just wants to see him _let go_ of it for a little while. To relax and not worry about following the rules for a few minutes.

The sciences building is strictly off-limits after classes are over, thanks to what’s inside; it’s also the tallest building on campus. She’s been on the roof twice. Once involved smoking a contraband cigarette with Paula and Jessica, one that left her swearing to never do _that_ again. Once involved letting a guy with thin razorblade scars on his inner elbows feel her up, then snarl at her when she shoved his wandering hands away. She relished his spat, enraged curses; she curled her hands into fists, adrenaline pumping through her as she almost dared him to lay a finger on her.

She has needed someone to break for so long, someone other than herself who can take the fists against the ribs and the howling in her blood.

But Ned can’t. He’s not the rock for her to break herself against.

His palm is damp before she releases it to take out her lockpicks and break in through the most hidden door she’s found. The building is eerily quiet and they have forty-five minutes before curfew, her history homework is waiting and she doesn’t give a _fuck_ , she just knows that she needs to see the stars with him right now, _right_ fucking now. That if she doesn’t, she’s going to break apart.

She takes his hand again and he doesn’t speak or protest again, as she guides him up, rigging the exit door on the roof so it won’t go off before they cross through it. She came up here earlier and left a few supplies for them: a standard-issue blanket, an apple and an orange snagged from the dining hall.

But none of that matters when she hears him sigh in wonder beside her, when she looks over and sees his lips parted as he shoves his glasses up. “Oh… wow.”

The sky above them is pitch-black and scattered with stars, and they are so high that when she tips her chin up she can’t see the orange light bleeding into the horizon. The air is colder and she wraps her arms around herself, then glances over at him again.

“Worth it?”

“Hmm.” He pushes his glasses up and gives her a grin. “Well, the view is second to none.”

She takes a deep breath, the cold air searing down her throat, and gives herself a little shake. “I have a blanket… we can stargaze for a while.”

He glances at his watch, giving her a little nod, and she thinks that keeping him out just five minutes past curfew will be a small victory in itself.

They don’t have enough blanket to totally wrap around themselves, so they prop their backs against the edge of the roof and drape the blanket over their laps.

“So are you from around here?”

He smiles, but she sees something bitter in it. “Not at all. You?”

She shakes her head. “I’m from Illinois, near Chicago,” she says, before her stomach turns. If he doesn’t already know, that notoriety alone might make him connect the dots to the person she was. “So, if you’re not at all from around here… Florida? California?”

“Georgia,” he tells her. “I didn’t… I didn’t want to come here.”

“I didn’t either.” She wraps her arms around her knees. “What happened?”

It’s a conversation that happens here, whispered in the dark between roommates on the first night sleeping feet apart, speculated about behind backs of enemies. It’s currency between them, their stories, in a place where most of them have already lost so much.

He’s quiet for a moment. “I started gaining weight four years ago,” he tells her. “Like a crazy amount of weight. No matter what I did. I was… I guess I was already kinda shy, and that didn’t help. There were—names. When I came back from summer break and I looked like the—the Michelin man. But my parents finally found a doctor who figured out how to help me, and he’s really great, but he’s _here_. I have to go for checkups every two weeks and at the end of the year he’s hoping I’ll be stabilized… but my parents are so far away and my dad—he works a lot on the weekends, and I… I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

His arms are crossed. “I should shut up.”

She shakes her head. “I like hearing you talk. You have a really nice voice. You’re easy to listen to.” She bumps her shoulder gently against his. “You should speak up more.”

He shrugs a little, his gaze fixed on the wall opposite them. “Easier not to,” he mumbles.

She waits a beat. “I get it. My dad works a lot too. Pretty much all the time.”

“Mmm.”

She glances at him from the corner of her eye. “All right, Nickerson. You get off on being withholding, huh?”

“What?”

“I tell you I like to hear you talk and you stop talking. I guess if I told you I’m freezing right now, you’d get up and move to the other side of the roof instead of wrapping your arm around my shoulders.”

“Do you—do you want me to?”

“Yeah.” She feels her heartbeat speed up a little, her stomach flipping—and she really is being ridiculous. “We did say we were going to practice some more, didn’t we?”

“You did.”

She glances over at him again. “If you didn’t want to…”

After a moment, he murmurs, “Now who’s getting off on being withholding…”

She elbows him gently in the ribs. “What do you do for fun?”

He shoves his glasses up. “Read,” he tells her. “Watch movies.”

“The weights… you look like you’d be a great football player.”

He shrugs. “No team here.”

“At your old school?”

“I thought about trying out.” He glances down. “Eighty pounds ago.”

“So we should play touch. You can be shirts and I’ll be skins.” She grins. “There’s nothing like tackling someone into a big pile of fall leaves…”

“Is that… is that the kind of guy you like?”

It’s her turn to fall silent for a moment. “I don’t know what kind of guy I like,” she whispers finally.

“Oh.”

She glances over at him again. “You seem pretty cool, though.”

He snorts and looks down, and she feels a rush of anger; she cranes her neck, reaching for his chin to lift his head and look into his eyes, and he pushes his glasses up again. “You do,” she says, her voice firm. “And fuck anyone who didn’t see that.”

He searches her eyes, then looks down again. She can feel his jaw trembling faintly, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Look, I _know_ ,” she says. “I…”

"What do you know about it?” he replies, and his jaw is set. “You’re… you’re drop-dead gorgeous and confident and…”

“And it doesn’t matter _one damn bit_ ,” she replies, her voice just as angry as his. “Because the one guy who I want to pay attention to me more than any other couldn’t give less of a _damn_ about me. Because I’ll never be good enough for him—”

She bites off her words, shaking her head and jerking away from him, and she’s beyond angry to feel tears rising in her eyes. She scrambles to her feet, pushing the heels of her hands against her eyes.

"And I’ve made sure of it,” she says, the words spilling out of her, burning her lips. “I’ve made fucking _sure_ of it.”

She’s tense and so, so angry, angry like she was when her father’s fucking _administrative assistant_ was the one to tell her about the decision to send her here, the way she was when she heard him come home at three in the morning when she was a little girl and knew that if she rushed downstairs to him she would be greeted with a weary smile and a _not now, not now, sweetie, go back to bed._ She’s angry because Ned’s like her and she can’t fix him, and even if she could, it wouldn’t fix _her._

He touches her elbow and she takes another step away from him. Then he wraps one arm around her, slowly, and she’s trembling faintly when she turns toward him and buries her face against his chest.

She smells laundry detergent and deodorant and soap and _him_. She thinks of those damned _study sessions_ with her teacher and she feels sick; oh, she can seduce him here, let him help her forget for a while, but this is how she burns it down. She doesn’t build; she only destroys. And she will destroy him.

"That’s not true,” he tells her softly. “There’s no one you’re not good enough for.”

She sniffles. “You’re one to talk. Shrugging off every compliment I give you like I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He snorts. “You don’t.”

She tips her head back up, searching his eyes, almost defiant. “So show me,” she demands, aware that she has probably trailed mascara down her cheeks with her tears, that her face is likely flushed and ugly. “If you’re so awful it should be easy to show me.”

“I can’t kiss, or—” He chokes, shaking his head. “I don’t… the longest I’ve ever talked to a girl is with you, and I’ve never danced with a girl who wasn’t my mom…”

She cups his face in her palms. “And practice makes perfect,” she tells him, and sniffles.

He did learn, she realizes, as he brushes his lips against hers. It isn’t really even a kiss, just a prelude to one, and there’s no demand to it, only invitation. She closes her eyes and parts her lips.

And he is still eager and sweet, but his tongue slides into her mouth and strokes against hers, still tentative and slow. She slips her fingers into his dark, silky hair and tilts her head, and when she feels a sudden overwhelming desire to mold her body against his and rub against the erection she’s sure he probably has, she expects it—and she denies herself. She can forget herself, lose herself in him, and she will still hate the person she sees in the mirror in the morning.

She’s gasping when he breaks the kiss. “Oh, that was totally shit,” she teases him with a slow grin. “I’m sure you can’t do any worse than that…”

He searches her eyes and she realizes that his confidence is that easily challenged, but he brushes the tip of his nose against hers. “Well, I can try.”

His next kiss leaves her weak in the knees, embarrassingly so. There’s a teasing in it, a playfulness, and his hand isn’t on her ass or drifting toward her breasts. He just holds her and kisses her, thoroughly, like they have all the time in the world, like there is no one else at all.

And for once, she’s surprised to find, she _wants_ him to at least try out a move on her. His fumblings will be clumsy and sweet, and she will have to guide him, and she—

And then she will lose him, when he finds out about her. Or he will come to her and expect that if she has slept with one guy, he won’t even have to ask.

He’s gasping after that kiss. “Terrible, right?”

“The worst,” she moans, and reaches for him again.

He stiffens a little in surprise when she drags her nails down his back, over his shirt; he reaches down and gathers her to him, lifting her off her feet, and she brushes against his erection and realizes that it’s unintentional. When they break the kiss he nuzzles against her neck, planting gentle kisses against her skin, and for the first time she realizes she doesn’t feel dread in a guy’s embrace.

Slowly he lowers her to her feet again. “I know I’m not good,” he murmurs.

“ _Good_ definitely isn’t the word,” she murmurs, and runs her fingers through his hair. “Ned, that… oh my God.”

“Do you feel better?”

She gives him a very small smile. “Do you?”

“Right now, yeah,” he says. “I feel like I’m on the moon right now. Like I’ll never come down.”

“But we will.” She reaches up and kisses his cheek. “Definite improvement, Ned, but I think you need some more study sessions.”

“If you insist,” he says. Then he glances at his watch. “Oh—we have _one minute_ —”

"Relax,” she tells him. “It’ll be all right.”

But she knows he won’t relax. She tucks the salvaged blanket where it will be out of the elements and they sneak back in, their feet a blur on the stairs. The last few stragglers are making their way into their dorms, and Ned pauses when they reach the edge of the quad.

“I’ll walk you back.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she tells him. “I’ll be fine. _Go._ ”

But he is still holding her hand, and he gives it a little tug; she turns back toward him and he gives her one last kiss. “Tomorrow?”

"Well, it _would_ have been later on tonight…” Her soft smile becomes a small grin.

"Don’t tease,” he murmurs, and gives her hand a squeeze before he releases her.

She glances back when she reaches her dorm, just to see him disappearing into his with his own glance back, and she knows. She’ll break him if she isn’t careful, just because she can.

But, for the first time in a long time, she wants to be careful.


End file.
